Anybody else wondering why they made the changes they did to the ipod app in ios5

[richsadams]

Ever the optimist, Rich? Well, maybe you are right. Get back to me quickly and tell me what it's all about. Good news only, mind!

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Well, I can't say if anything has changed yet. I downloaded iTunes 10.5.1 and started the iTunes Match process, but it's still working on it. I posted some screen shots in the news story linked above.

I'm a little concerned at this point though. iTunes Match gathered information about my iTunes library, then began matching my music with songs in the iTunes Store. Now it's onto uploading the songs in my iTunes library that apparently are not in the iTunes store. My concern is that out of the 7,505 songs I have in my iTunes library, iTunes Match says it could only find 1,531 of them. So right now it's uploading 5,905 songs from my iTunes library!

That means that iTunes Match could only "match" about 20% of the music I have. Admittedly a majority of my iTunes library consists of music that I've ripped from CD's, however a majority of that is really mainstream music that I'm almost certain can be found in the iTunes Store (although I'm not going to spend the hours and hours it would take to confirm that). So I'm going to let it continue to upload...even at the high upload broadband speed I have it will take a few hours. Then I'm going to have a look and see if I can figure out why it couldn't find 80% of my library! If it is glitchy (not saying it is at this point) then by the time you get it in the UK it should be ironed out.

As you recall I enabled iTunes Match on my iPad and once again, it turned it off later - that was yesterday. So after signing up for iTunes match in iTunes on my computer I enabled iTunes Match on my iPad. This time a pop-up said "iTunes Match will replace the music library on this device" with an "Enable" or "Cancel" button. I enabled it. I opened the Music App on my iPad a little bit ago and it was empty...didn't respond at all. Presumably this is because it's still "matching" as it were, so we''ll see how it goes.

It's always fun to be a "beta tester".

Stay tuned!

 

[Hayles66]

This worries me too because when I first went into iTunes, a lot of song titles, artists etc... have different spellings etc... Could that be what is the problem. I did wonder if that could balls up the works.

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[richsadams]

This worries me too because when I first went into iTunes, a lot of song titles, artists etc... have different spellings etc... Could that be what is the problem. I did wonder if that could balls up the works.

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That's a good point...hadn't thought about that. If they don't match "exactly" I wonder if iTunes Match won't recognize it? Yikes! Now that I think about it I have gone in and changed a number of the album's genres...one's that I thought were more "rock" than "pop" for instance. I don't think I've changed 80% of my library, but I know I've changed a sizable number. Ugh.

No way of knowing at the moment, but I'll be interested to see what the final results are.

 

[Hayles66]

Well, a lot of my songs were ripped and didn't match iTunes spelling so I've done major reworking of my library because I'm like that. I'm not obsessive but! I did wonder though! Little things like Beyonce and Beyonc'e. That's not exact but you know what I mean.
By the way, I've got the iTunes 10.5.1 but do I have to pay the £25 to get iTunes match itself? Or is this because UK doesn't have it that I don't see it?
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[richsadams]

Well, a lot of my songs were ripped and didn't match iTunes spelling so I've done major reworking of my library because I'm like that. I'm not obsessive but! I did wonder though! Little things like Beyonce and Beyonc'e. That's not exact but you know what I mean.
By the way, I've got the iTunes 10.5.1 but do I have to pay the £25 to get iTunes match itself? Or is this because UK doesn't have it that I don't see it?
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Yeah, I've done similar things as well. Plus changed lousy cover art or whatever. iTunes Match has about 2,000 more songs to upload here so it'll be at least another hour.

If it's really the case that everything has to be an exact match that's going to cause a dust up because I'm betting a lot of people have changed something or other. It may all be a to do about nothing though. If I were Apple I'd just identify the album, not any tags or other details. I can't imagine they wouldn't have considered how many songs would have to be uploaded if they didn't match exactly. That's a huge amount of actual storage space especially considering you only have to pay US$24.95. We'll see.

If you open iTunes and click on "Store" in the toolbar do you see "Turn on iTunes Match" in the drop-down? If so, that's where you start.

 

[Hayles66]

Nope! So I'm guessing they are multi tiering us. Sigh. Second again.
I see they are limiting the amount of songs. No problem for me though because I have 11000 and 700 of those are iTunes.


When iTunes Match is released to the public, a subscription will cost $24.99 each year and allow for up to 10 personal computers or iOS devices to access up to 25,000 songs of an iTunes library from anywhere through iCloud.

I suppose that will be £20 for us Brits then. Could be quite costly if you add the icloud amount as well. Hmmm! I need to work on hubby, I can see trouble coming!
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[richsadams]

Well, I let iTunes Match run for about five hours. It hung up on Step 3 of 3, "Uploading artwork and remaining songs". It made it to song 4,578 of the 5,905 it said it needed to upload. I hit the "Stop" button and then hit "Start" again and it's just sitting there in Step 1, "Gathering information about your iTunes Library". However the progress bar still says "Uploading remaining songs and artwork...". Hmmm...

 

[Munky]

I think myself, for the time being, I'm staying on 5.0 and not updating iTunes. I don't see anything worth updating for yet.

 

[richsadams]

I think myself, for the time being, I'm staying on 5.0 and not updating iTunes. I don't see anything worth updating for yet.

If you're not going to use iTunes Match there's really no reason to upgrade to iTunes 10.5.1.

 

[carl 11]

so rich. If I get this right itunes match does...what? store my music on the cloud....thats it?

 

[richsadams]

so rich. If I get this right itunes match does...what? store my music on the cloud....thats it?

Yes and no.

Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to iCloud. Since there are more than 20 million songs in the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud. All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. Once your music is in iCloud, you can stream and store it on any of your devices. Even better, all the music iTunes matches plays back from iCloud at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.

More here:

Apple - iCloud - All your music on all your devices.

 

[richsadams]

iTunes Match Installation

For anyone that's a glutton for punishment , I've posted a short novel on my not-so-fun experience with enabling iTunes Match:

http://www.ipadforums.net/apple-ipad-news/53636-itunes-match-launched-3.html#post368692

The good news is that iTunes Match works and it works well on the iPad, even with the slightly less kludgy since iOS 5.0.1 Music App.

 

[Hayles66]

Well, I must be a glutton for punishment. That must have taken a lot of hours to complete, Rich! No doubt, it will take me a week to do the same thing. I have 11000+ songs and I have Windows Vista with a low Mbps download. I haven't used an Ethernet, so you suggest I do? Why doesn't wi-fi work as well? Modern technology, hey? Glad it's over for you but think about the rest of the world, we have to wait for the fat cats to stop arguing and just let us join the iTunes bandwagon.

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[richsadams]

Well, I must be a glutton for punishment. That must have taken a lot of hours to complete, Rich! No doubt, it will take me a week to do the same thing. I have 11000+ songs and I have Windows Vista with a low Mbps download. I haven't used an Ethernet, so you suggest I do? Why doesn't wi-fi work as well? Modern technology, hey? Glad it's over for you but think about the rest of the world, we have to wait for the fat cats to stop arguing and just let us join the iTunes bandwagon.

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Hi Haley. Yes, it did take some time, but I'm betting it will take less time once Apple's servers are able to cool down a bit. I also think that the matching of songs will (must) improve as well. There are lots of reports of albums in user's iTunes Library being available on iTunes but they still don't "match". There are other reports that a couple of songs on an album that otherwise matches aren't matching! That makes no sense. In any case, I think things will improve as time goes on.

Yes, a "hardwire"/Ethernet connection is almost always going to be superior to Wi-Fi for a number of reasons. Generally a lot of the same reasons that a wired phone at home works better than a cell phone. But speed is the number one advantage. Wi-Fi is subject to all sorts of issues that a wired connection will never experience. Wired is safe, steady and reliable. Go with wired whenever you can.

I agree...the fat cats need to step into the future...or get left behind.

 

[Hayles66]

They can't bear losing all that lolly they make off the sad songwriters they rip off every time they sell their records. About time that whole industry changed if you ask me and the tv/film industry while we are at it! Very interesting comments on all the techno websites. Future Apple TV, Siri on TV, car industry etc... Nothing will surprise me now! Reality distortion field works well for us all!

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